Page 6 of Nasty
There were other thoughts inside my head. Thoughts that made me uncomfortable, down to the very roots of my soul. I couldn’t even allow them to form properly, but they lingered like a permeating smoke, weaving themselves through my synapses, digging in deep. No less than an hour ago, I’d been convinced Fix was still on a mission to murder me. His confession, though worrying, had changed things. I didn’t know how, and to what extent I was going to allow it to affect me, but it was undeniable: ithadaffected me.
Proceed with caution. Donotdo anything stupid, Sera.The voice in the back of my head, which had always lead me to be careful and kept me out of harm’s way, was now screaming at me to be smart. And I was listening. “I’m going to sleep now. And this gun is going to be glued to my hand until I feel like I’m safe. Do you understand?”
A ruinous smirk spread across Fix’s face. He really was magnificent, damn him. “Fine by me. There’s nothing sexier than a woman with a weapon in her hand. Just be careful you don’t shoot yourself, Angel.”
Angel. The nickname both set my teeth on edge and made my body stand to attention at the same time. I fought against the shiver that pressed against my spine. “Don’t call me that. And don’t worry. The only person in any danger of being shot is you, Marcosa. You should get some sleep, too. We have a long drive in the morning. Centralia, Pennsylvania, is a long fucking way away.”
THREE
CENTRALIA
SERA
I supposed I would have known the mess I was walking into if I’d bothered to Google Centralia. Never having been to Pennsylvania, I’d assumed the small town was going to be exactly that: a small, unremarkable town, populated by hard working, everyday people, doing normal, everyday things. There would be grocery stores, and hardware stores, and people mowing their lawns. Kids playing in the streets. However, as we approached our destination, it became increasingly apparent that all was not well in Centralia. There was nothing normal about the place, and there were plenty of signs to prove it. Not metaphorical signs. Real, physical ones that started to pop up at the side of the road, about five miles from the town limits.
WARNING – DANGER!
UNDERGROUND MINE FIRE!
WALKING OR DRIVING IN THIS AREA COULD RESULT
IN SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH.
DANGEROUS GASES PRESENT.
GROUND PRONE TO SUDDEN COLLAPSE.
PUBLIC ALERT
Area subject to mine subsidence and toxic gas emissions.
SILENT HILL, PA.
Fix’s face said it all: he hadn’t known about Centralia’s mine fire either. As we crossed into the town proper, the cracks in the highway’s blacktop evolved from considerable to catastrophic. Eventually, a crack wide enough to swallow the truck whole put a stop to our journey, and we had to get out and head toward the rundown, ramshackle buildings in the distance on foot.
“Place is fucking deserted,” Fix murmured.
He was right. The closer we got, the more obvious the neglect and decay became. The only cars in sight were those abandoned at the side of the road, rusting, at least twenty years old and sprouting long grasses and saplings through the rents in their warped metal shells.Smoke rose in great plumes from the hillside that buttressed the town, presumably escaping up from the ground.
“Those signs were decades old,” I said. “There’s no way there should still be smoke, right?”
Fix considered the dirty grey columns that listed on the breeze, scratching at the back of his neck. “Who knows? The town’s sitting right on top of a coal mine. If a fire caught down there, there’s no saying how long it would burn for. It’d explain the smell.”
The air was acrid and tainted by the bite of chemicals. Not enough that it made breathing difficult, or enough that it felt like your lungs were bleeding, but enough to know that every inhalation was shaving a minute off your life. We walked further down the highway until the buildings grew closer and the blacktop buckled altogether, split into two right down the median and yawning open like a mouth that lead directly into hell.
The asphalt was no longer a dull industrial grey. It was every faded color of the rainbow, a carpet of chalk graffiti stretching out before us, every available square inch of the ground covered in messily scrawled handwriting and spray-painted images. Turtles. Cheshire cats. Men, hanging themselves. Love hearts. People fucking. And, naturally, about a thousand crudely drawn dicks.
“Why do guys always draw dicks on everything?” I sighed, stepping over a large chunk of debris in the road. Out of the corner of my eye, Fix grinned, his eyes flashing with mischief.
“How do you know it was guys? I’m sure a chick drew one or two. Look. That one.” He pointed. “That one’s got a foreskin and veins. And the balls aren’t massively oversized. A chick definitely drew that one. Far too realistic to have been a guy.”
“I s’pose you’re right. Guys do always like to think their balls are way bigger than they are.”
As we passed a dilapidated gas station, covered in red spray paint, my nerves jangled like a set of keys. The town was a ruin. It was highly unlikely that the person who hired Fix to kill me actually lived here, but there was a chance. Maybe some of the derelict, crumbling buildings that lined the main street of the town—the ones that were still standing—wereoccupied, and the piece of crap who contacted Monica had chosen to hide himself away here.
Carver. Even the name sent chills up and down my spine. It placed images inside my head. Very disturbing images of flesh being sliced and gouged. Of bone being whittled, and of sinew being severed.
A stifling silence hung thickly in the air like a blanket, covering Centralia. People obviously came here—someone had to have drawn all of the graffiti—but as far as I could see the rubberneckers and tourists who arrived armed with paint cans and sticks of chalk showed up infrequently. Nothing moved here. Nothing really lived. Even the grass and trees that covered the hillside and pushed their way up through the concrete looked yellowed, sour, and sick.
