Page 47 of Runt's Haunted Ride
"I see them," he said grimly, and the bike accelerated.
The eyes kept pace impossibly. And now I could see shapes moving in the darkness—shadows that were somehow darker than the lightless night around us. They had form but no substance, like living smoke that occasionally solidified enough to show claws and teeth.
One lunged for us from the left side of the road. Jack swerved, and I felt the cold of it as it passed through the space we'd just occupied.
"Shadow wraiths," I yelled.
"Hold on!" Jack shouted.
He was weaving now, the bike responding to his every command as the shadow creatures tried to force us off the road. They reached for us with smoky appendages that left trails of cold wherever they passed.
Jack pulled his gun with one hand, steering with the other. He fired three shots into the mass of shadows on our right. The bullets passed through harmlessly, but the muzzle flash made them recoil, shrieking in voices that hurt to hear.
"The gun's no good. The light hurts them!" I shouted.
"Okay," Jack called back, turning the high beams on the bike. We saw the shadow wraiths pull back into the darkness, creating enough space for us to surge forward.
The bike climbed. Jack knew every curve, every dip, navigating in near-total darkness with only instinct and memory.
As soon as they appeared, the shadow wraiths were gone.
I allowed myself a moment of relief, my cheek pressed against Jack's back, feeling his heartbeat through the leather.
Then from behind us, I heard something growing louder. The roar of motorcycle engines.
I turned to look, and my blood turned to ice.
Headlights. Two of them. Riding them were the purple and green clowns. I could hear him laughing—that same terrible shrieking laugh from the carnival.
"Jack!" I screamed over the wind. "Clowns!"
He glanced in his mirror and cursed. "Fucking hell."
The bikes were gaining impossibly fast. They should have been limited by the same laws of physics that governed us, but they weren't. I had no doubt they were covered with some sort of power or powder.
The green one pulled alongside us on the left, grinning maniacally. "Come play with us, gorilla man!" His voice carried over the wind and engine noise with unnatural clarity.
On our right, the purple one matched our speed. "Hi, pretty bird!" He reached out with one hand, his fingers stretching longer than they should, trying to grab me off the back of the bike.
I pressed myself tighter against Jack, making myself as small a target as possible.
Jack fired his gun at the purple clown, but the bullet passed right through him. The clown just laughed.
The green one got close to us. He made to reach for Jack's hand, but Jack pulled his gun and fired not at the clowns but at the road directly in front of the green one's bike. The bullet sparked against the asphalt, and the clown instinctively swerved to avoid it.
It gave us a few seconds. Jack poured on the speed, the Harley's engine screaming. We pulled ahead, but I could hear the bikes behind us, still giving chase. Then they were gone.
"They're gone," I shouted. "How much farther to the pass?"
"Where did they go? Two miles, maybe less. What the hell?"
I looked around Jack and saw the road ahead was filled with animals. Deer, dozens of them, standing in a line across both lanes. But their eyes glowed red in the Harley's headlight,and their movements were wrong—jerky and unnatural, like marionettes controlled by an amateur puppeteer.
Jack didn't slow down. "Hold tight!"
He aimed straight for a gap between two deer and gunned it. We shot through the opening, close enough that I could have reached out and touched them. They turned their heads to track us as we passed, moving in perfect synchronization.
One of them—a massive buck—broke from the line and charged after us. Jack swerved, barely avoiding its antlers.
