"Stop being a coward," Jamie snapped, tinny and distant over the bluetooth, and Kelly nearly hung up on her right then.
"What the hell would you even know about it?"
"I know you're running away from a family reunion because someone made fun of your accent."
Kelly squinted through the car window, looking for the turn off hidden in all the darkness of the trees. "That's not...do you really think that's why I left?"
"Tell me the difference then, little sister."
Kelly couldn't help the whine that ground its way up out of her chest. "You know why."
"Apparently I don't."
It was too hard to explain. Kelly took a deep breath, fighting the urge to tell Jamie to leave it alone because...well, she had just run out on a family reunion, on people she hadn't seen in four years, not since she was fifteen, for crying out loud. And why? "People kept saying they were sorry. About Dad. I just...I couldn't."
"Oh, Kels." Jamie's voice, when she spoke, was unbearably sympathetic.
"No, listen," and it was suddenly important for Kelly to explain because Jamie couldn't possibly understand. "They wanted me to be sad about it, and–"
"Why? Aren't you?"
And there, that was the whole problem right there. "Isn't that something you should already know, Mhie? If you ever talked to me at all?"
"Don't you dare blame me for that, little sister. You've got two hands and a cell phone, you can always call me."
Kelly actually didn't have an answer for that, nothing that didn't sound childish and petulant, and she took the next turn aggressively to make up for it. "Why, would you even answer if I call?"
"I'd do my best." Jamie had this way of sounding so sincere. She was doing it now and Kelly suddenly missed her, even though she'd just stormed out of Uncle Toby's yard without saying goodbye, and suddenly her plan to drive to the closest town that boasted a motel with late-night check-in seemed petty and ridiculous.
"Shit, Jamie."
"You know I love you."
She made a face. "Yeah, you say that."
"Well, one of us has to have the guts."
Kelly opened her mouth to argue that it wasn't about guts, it was about not being needlessly sentimental, but something dark and huge flashed across the road through the beams of her headlights, and then, before she could react, something else slammed into the passenger side of her car with the force of a boulder.
The car skidded; Kelly tried desperately to get some traction, and managed not to roll the whole thing over but ended up in a ditch on the opposite shoulder, badly shaken, headlights blazing into the trees not a yard away.
"Shit." Kelly tried to uncurl her hands from the steering wheel. It took two goes, and even then her hands were shaking so badly, she had to concentrate hard just to unbuckle her seat-belt.
The bluetooth earpiece was gone, vanished somewhere into the car, but when she grabbed her phone out of the dock the call had disconnected anyway. Kelly redialed her sister, rummaging in the glovebox for her flashlight, and hoped it's still had batteries.
And then her sister picked up on the first ring. "What the hell happened?"
"I think I hit something. I mean, I did hit something. Or, it hit me." Kelly fumbled the door open and staggered out into the road, knees feel like jelly. "I think it was a deer." Because that first dark shape flashing through the high-beams had been deer-ish, she was pretty sure. She switched on the flashlight, thankful the batteries still good, and swept the light over the passenger side door. "Shit."
"What? Are you okay? Where are you?"
Kelly had never heard Jamie sound so worried before, and it tugged at her heart, and suddenly she felt guilty. "I'm not hurt, all right? There's just a big fucking dent in my door."
Blood streaked across the paint, and Kelly turned the light back down the road to highlight the large black shape piled up on the asphalt. "Aw, man. I think I killed a deer."
"I'm coming to get you." The sound went muffled for a few moments. Kelly guessed Jamie had a hand over her phone mike, and could hear her yelling something to someone.
"You don't have to," she protested, but Jamie cut her off, determined and merciless like always.
"Tell me where you are or I'll call Jenni at the police station and get the whole town out after you."
"Okay, okay!" Kelly gave her directions and hung up, dropping her phone on the passenger seat. What a mess.
She switched the headlights back from high-beam but left them on, and then had a go at starting the car. It started okay but made a godawful noise when she tried to back it up. When she went around to check it out she could see why at once; the back wheels were firmly jammed down into the ditch, no chance of getting them out without, oh, planks or a ramp or something.
"Wonderful," Kelly muttered miserable, and really wondered why the whole fucking weekend was a disaster.
She panned the flashlight back down the road, picked out the sad heap of shadows lying down there, and felt a pang of guilt. She'd never hit an animal before, not even a cat, and it wasn't like she was vegan or anything but she also wasn't dead inside.
Kelly figured she should probably go drag it off the road or something. Were there laws about that? She had a vague idea that road-kill attracted scavengers who then got cleaned up by other cars, but she honestly couldn't imagine a coyote being stupid enough to keep chomping on a deer carcass when cars were just whizzing by. Still. It would be the responsible thing to do. She didn't want anyone else to hit it.
But when she got close she saw that it wasn't, actually, a deer. It looked more like...a dog? Some kind of savage-looking, what were they called again? Borzoi, maybe, sort of hellhound-ish, the kind of dog you'd find in the Marianas Trench. Whatever it was, it was a mess of blood. Kelly wondered if maybe it was somebody's pet running loose, and crouched down to check its neck for a collar.
Which was when the thing twisted up, snapping nasty deep-sea teeth just short of her fingers, and Kelly jerked back with a yell. She caught herself on one palm, almost toppling over, and then–"Oh, fuck," she breathed, because it wasn't dead. Gods.. It wasn’t..
"Hey there, buddy," she said soothingly, because injured animals were dangerous, even her knew that. "You're all right." It was a lie. Nothing that left a dent like that in a car could be even remotely all right.
"It's okay, I'm not gonna hurt you," and then she held up a hand that was supposed to show she wasn't a threat, but that was when the animal jerked up, finding its feet and snarling like, well, like it meant business.
"Okay, so you really are all right." Impossibly. Somehow. "I'm just going to...back away slowly."
The dog-thing shook itself from head to toe, and...okay, its leg had been broken, she was sure of it, but now it's stalking toward her on four perfectly good legs, and Kelly didn't know much about dogs but this one? Scared the ever-loving shit out of her.
"I'm sorry I hit you," she babbled, crabbing backwards and very, very aware that she was alone on a road at night, miles from any kind of help. "Nice dog? Good boy?"
Kelly could have sworn it sneered, but then it lunged at her, all teeth and blood, and she definitely didn't scream, but she did slam the flashlight in its mouth as hard as she could.
The thing yelped, but came back at her at once, and she just swung again, putting all her strength into it. There was a sickening crack, like bone breaking, and then the thing made a high-pitched sound before backing up, turning tail and disappearing into the trees.
Kelly stared after it for a moment. What the fuck? Then adrenaline kicked in and she was on her feet, sprinting back to the safety of the car. She hesitated with the door open. It was just a dog, she thought, and then, Yeah, Cujo was just a dog, too. Well. That was comforting. That definitely wasn't terrifying at all.
The flashlight was still working, astonishingly, but she switched it off to save the battery. Then she got back in the car, closing the door behind her, for no particular reason, she told herself and rummaged around in the back seat. Somewhere...it's there.
"Your father would have wanted you to have this," Uncle Toby had told her once, offering the thing up with a blank but altogether familiar expression. Kelly had just stared at it at first.
"Dad's hunting knife?" Not that her father had been much of a hunter. Kelly remembered the knife, though, as something her father had kept with him more and more toward the end, before Kelly's mother had thrown up her hands and left, taking Kelly with her. Paranoia, her mother had called it. Part of his delusions. Still, looking down on it in the gloom of Uncle Toby's den, Kelly hadn't known how to say she didn't want it, had taken it, and then thrown it in the back of the car to deal with later.
Kelly took it out of the sheath now, feeling ridiculous but not ridiculous enough to put it away. It was six inches long, serrated along one edge, inlaid with long curls of silver, and still sharp as fuck. It didn't make her feel much better, but she hung onto it anyway, settling back in the driver's seat to wait for her sister...
