The heater had barely begun to make a difference, but Dale felt the cold air sweep over him as Samara opened the door, swung her bag into the footwell, and dropped into the passenger seat.
“Thanks,” she said, gasping. “Missed my bus. Didn’t know what I’d do. It’s so cold…”
“That’s okay,” said Dale, snapping on his seatbelt. “Lucky though. You just caught me.”
He waited until she was also strapped in before easing off the handbrake and turning out of the car park.
“So…” he said. “I have no idea where you live.”
“Oh right. Near Rothie. That’s not too far is it?”
“Completely opposite direction,” said Dale.
“I can get out if—”
Dale shushed her. “Don’t worry about it. I still have that new car novelty and don’t mind the drive.”
He indicated right, and with no traffic, turned past the pub and through the crossing. The girl had gone.
Dale noticed Samara didn’t wear perfume. One of the few conditions of the new car was to operate a free taxi service for his parents. Having raised their children, they believed it was time to reap the benefits. He’d fulfilled his obligations twice, and on both occasions been swamped with the alcoholic kiss of his mother’s perfume. With Samara so close, he detected the slight freshness of her deodorant, her shampoo, the slight saltiness on her breath in the steamy confines of the car. Aware how close his hand lay to hers as he changed the gears. He glanced to the side.
Samara had turned in her seat, looking out of the passenger side window. Dale could barely see the tip of her nose protruding from the mass of hanging black hair.
He licked his lips.
“It’s good, you know?” he said to break the silence. “Having the car. Can fit my amp in the back and everything.”
They passed under a streetlight, the glow sweeping through the inside of the car.
In the dying ebb of the light, the girl with the long hair watched him from the back seat, gone again once they entered darkness.
Tyres squealed on the road.
“What the fuck?” cried Samara, her sketchpad sliding from her lap.
Dale righted the vehicle and stared back into the mirror.
The next streetlight cast its beacon through the car, the haze revealing little more than the sparkling rear window, still coated in the moisture of a cold evening come too sudden. Dale blinked. A crazy reflection between the window, the mirror and his glasses, somehow projecting the image of Samara behind him. He concentrated on the road, wary of a row of parked cars to their left.
His passenger had retrieved her sketchpad, but remained bent over, fussing around her boots. She retrieved a loose sheet of paper from the floor and shoved it back into the book. Dale caught a glimpse of a demonic face howling from the page, all jagged, angry scrawls, the black eyes and mouth intense holes, circled in pencil held by a tight, drilling fist.
“Sorry,” he muttered as she found another tableau of horrors and returned it home.
“It’s okay.”
He peeked into the back seat.
The rear window heater had finally started to work its magic. Clear horizontal streaks cut through the condensation, offering a filtered view of the street behind. His guitar lay across the seat.
Dale slowed, approaching a traffic light that had just turned red. Waiting at the junction, he indicated left. The detour would add maybe another ten minutes or so to their journey, but all the better when escorting a lady home. Yes, a little drive through the countryside. The scenic route…if not for the darkness that smothered all the woods, fields, and farmland. At least they’d be away from the streetlights. Each time they passed beneath the halogen glow Dale caught himself glancing in the mirror and checking the back seat.
With no traffic, the lights promptly changed to green, and Dale eased the car around the bend. Samara had either recovered all her drawings or given up the hunt for now. She sat back in her seat, sketchpad flat on her lap, her hands resting by her sides. Dale changed gear and entertained the image of her suddenly placing her hand over his. And what then? Find a private spot to pull over and see what happens? Or probably just drive on in more awkward silence.
He accelerated down the country road. To each side, lingering in the peripherals of the headlight beams, low stone walls shot by, the last apparent vestiges of civilisation as the vehicle hurtled into the night. The walls dropped away, with only overgrown grass, low hedgerows, and hanging tree branches lining the road. No more streetlights. Inside the car, the glow from the dashboard provided the only illumination, casting a sickly hue across their faces.
Dale sought out any bizarre reflections. Satisfied he wouldn’t be caught off guard again, he relaxed a little. Briefly considering some music, he decided against it. Wouldn’t really create the right atmosphere: a bunch of Californians screaming into a microphone.
Yet…would it? He’d often seen Samara around the college, usually hanging out with Lily on the wall out front, chain-smoking like a couple of old women at the bingo. Had he caught her at one his gigs? Another pale face in the crowd, watching him from the shadows at the back of the room? He tried to picture the other places he might have glimpsed her, but her face melded into so many others. He always came back to the low wall outside the college and the booth at The Scholar, where the two girls could often be found.
Just talk to her!
He imagined long tendrils of wires and twisted tubing, emerging from his skull and snaking over the short distance to his passenger, penetrating her brain. How he would download what he needed, learn her passions and how to break this awkward barrier. She came across as clinically timid, introverted to the point of a mute. Why had she even accepted a ride home in the first place…
It was cold, he reminded himself. She’d missed the last bus.
Desperate times.
In the absence of his desired mind-reading apparatus, the atmosphere in the car hung as dark and fogged as the road on which they travelled. It sat, an unwanted back seat passenger, leaning forward to grin between the two in the front. A living obstruction, causing an area of dead space between the two. Dale thought about those devices used to block radio signals. A jammer. Samara had smuggled a jammer into his car, and no matter how much he wanted to make small talk—
He couldn’t read her mind, but perhaps she could read his. She turned further from him, gazing out of the window.
“Hey…” he tried, the word hanging in the claustrophobic space. “So what…” He cleared his throat. “What do you think of the car, then?”
Stupid. So stupid.
Samara either didn’t hear his pathetic attempt at conversation or chose to ignore him. He guessed the latter. Here sat an artist, a macabre and bizarre artist, certainly not one who would be impressed by a Ford Mondeo. He had to be clever about this.
“Lily told me about your painting,” he said, desperate for any response. “Said it’s real good. Might win the big prize at the art show. You…you are going to enter it, right?”
For a moment, he thought she’d fallen asleep.
Samara sighed. “We have to. It’s compulsory.”
Getting somewhere…
“I’d love to see it. Tomorrow, maybe? If you’re around.”
He glanced to his left. Samara still hadn’t moved. Transfixed by the night rushing by.
On her lap the sketchpad rocked from the motion of the car. One of the loose pieces hung out. He wanted to mention it, to reach forwards and grab the picture before it fell back down into the footwell. The beast on the paper leered from the book, its face half-hidden by the hardback cover amidst a nest of wild hair, wide eyes with irises like spirals challenging him. Reach for me, it beckoned. Reach down, tuck me back in, touch her, have your fingers brush her skin…