Jules reached for a side door in the building, assuming—hoping—that it was the bathroom. She really needed to pee.
“I’m quirky,” she said, pulling on the handle. “At least this has gotta be—hoah!”
The smell hit her instantly, then the sight of the bathroom revealed behind the creaking door, and for a moment both robbed her of words. There was a toilet. and nothing else—no basin, not even a cistern. The walls were dark and coated with slime, the floor was wet with thick brown fluid… not pure shit, she thought, but an overflow of the stuff that filled the toilet. Thick, fluid, shifting, the sludge topped the toilet and dribbled slick down its surface, turning what might have once been white a uniform brown.
Behind her, Dana gagged.
Jules took a small step forward, fascinated, wondering just why the sludge in the pan was moving. And then she saw the scorpion, struggling in the fetid muck, slowly drowning. And unless that thing’s full of drowned critters, it’s weird that we open the door just in time to see this, she thought. It was almost as if.
She turned and looked around, past Dana, past the camper van buried in the undergrowth, along the lane that led away from this place up into the wooded hills, then back toward where she could just see the nose of the Rambler.
Dana watched her with raised eyebrows. Jules opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything they heard a muffled, “Fuck!” from somewhere around the front of the building.
“Seems we’ve found the attendant,” Jules said softly. Walking close together, she and Dana retraced their steps. Suddenly, her need to pee had abated.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Holden thought, and he uttered another nervous giggle. Heading back outside, he saw Marty and Curt through the doorway, trying to work one of the pumps. Marty was holding the nozzle in the mouth of the Rambler’s fuel pipe, while Curt circled the pump, reaching out now and then to run his hands across the flaking painted surface. Looking for a switch or lever, Holden guessed, though he seemed to find neither.
“I don’t think there’s gonna be—” Holden began, voice raised to carry out as he approached the door.
Suddenly a shadowy figure filled the doorway, blocking most of the light, and a voice said, “You come in here uninvited?”
“Fuck!” Holden gasped loudly. “Dude… ”
“Sign says closed,” the attendant said, because that must have been what this man was. Tall and broad, old and weathered until his skin looked like a leather jacket left out in the sun too long, his left eye terribly bloodshot and swollen. His lips and chin were stained and glistening with chewed tobacco and drool, and he scowled in anger and disgust.
He blocked the exit completely, and that was what worried Holden the most, more than his grotesque face and pissed attitude. If I want to get out and he doesn’t want me to… He was just about to start looking around for an alternative escape—jump through a window, perhaps, or maybe he’d find a door hidden behind a pile of badly stuffed animals at the back of the shop—when the attendant grunted and turned around, walking out to face the others.
Holden let out a gasp of relief. That was when he realized he’d been holding his breath.
“We were looking to buy some gas?” Curt said, taking a few steps toward the old man. Marty hung back, still holding the nozzle in the Rambler’s fuel pipe. “Does this pump work?”
“Works if you know how to work it,” The attendant said. He glanced to his left and paused, and Holden took the opportunity to slip from the building. He circled around the old man until he was standing just a few feet to Curt’s right, and past the guy he saw Dana and Jules appear cautiously around the side of the building. Both were wide-eyed and slightly panicked.
What have they seen? he wondered. Dana glanced at the attendant only briefly, then past him at Holden. They swapped nervous smiles.
The attendant didn’t move to help Marty with the fuel. The moment felt frozen, and Holden wanted to move it along.
“We also wanted to get directions…” he said.
“Yeah, we’re looking for…” Curt began, frowning, looking at Jules and asking, “What is it?”
“Tillerman Road,” Jules said, taking a step closer to the attendant. Holden could see her nervousness, but he also knew that she wouldn’t want to seem afraid. Her hands were fisted by her sides, holding on to control.
The attendant just peered at her, but something about him changed. He’d become still—jaw no longer chewing, body no longer swaying—as if the name had hit home. He looked Jules up and down, and Holden almost saw her skin flinching back from his gaze.
Then the attendant sighed and muttered, “What a waste.” He walked toward the pump, moving with an exaggerated gait as if neither leg belonged to him. Curt stepped aside, and the old man plucked a ring of keys from his pocket—far too many for this shack, surely?— and unlocked a latch on the pump. Marty stayed where he was, regarding the man with hooded eyes.
Sometimes it’s good to be stoned, Holden thought, and he smiled slightly, thinking how much Marty would appreciate the sentiment. “Tillerman Road takes you up into the hills. Dead end at the old Buckner place.”
“Is that the name of—?” Jules began.
“There wasn’t a name,” Curt said.
“Ready?” the attendant said to Marty, and when he nodded the old guy flicked a switch, then said, “Okay, pull the handle.” Marty pulled, the pump thunked and shook for a couple of seconds, and then the pungent smell of fuel filled the air. Holden wondered how old this fuel was, and whether it had an expiration date, and wished he were back in the city where he didn’t have to think about such things. The numbers behind the glass dome on top of the pump started turning. Holden thought he’d seen a pump like this in an old movie, once. Very old.
“My cousin bought a house up there,” Curt said to the attendant’s back. “You go through a mountain tunnel, there’s a lake, would that be…?”
“Buckner place,” the attendant confirmed, leaning on the pump and spitting a brown slick at his feet. “Always someone lookin’ to sell that plot.” He looked over his shoulder at Curt and smiled, exposing bad teeth stained brown, gaps here and there, and a thick gray tongue that looked to Holden like something trawled up from the bottom of the sea. “An’ always some fool lookin’ to buy.”
“You knew the original owners?” Jules asked.
“Not the first,” he replied, looking the girls up and down again. “But I’ve seen plenty come and go. Been here since the war.” “Which war?” she asked.
“You know damn well which war!” he shouted. He took two steps toward Marty and closed his hand over the nozzle, Marty just letting go and stepping back in time. He caught Holden’s eye and shrugged, hands held out.
Holden tried to smile at him, but the atmosphere didn’t feel light enough.
“Would that have been with the blue, and some in gray?” Marty asked. “Brother, perhaps fighting against brother in that war?”
“You sassin’ me, boy?”
“You were rude to my friend,” Marty said, his voice level, gentle as ever.
The attendant grew still again for a second, and Holden thought, Cogs turning in there, stuff happening, he’s processing what he didn’t expect. Then the old man looked at Jules again.
“That whore?”
Curt took a quick step forward but Holden was already moving, aware of what was about to happen. He splayed his left hand on Curt’s chest and held it there until his friend looked at him. He was angry but, Holden was pleased to see, also a little freaked. That was good. That would prevent this weird shit from descending into something more.