Oblivion Road

Chapter 1 The dark-haired girl sprawled unconscious in the deep snow, the soft moonlight giving her pale features a fine glow, like an image from a fairy tale. Her hair fanned out around her head like folds of silk as the heavy snow continued to fall. Her clothes were already covered, as was one of her hands. The stark whiteness of the snow was marred only by drops of red that had come from her nose and ears. Clutching his arm to his chest, as though it were broken, a teenage boy stumbled onto the two-lane road where the girl lay. He had struggled up from the ditch at the edge of the forest. Now he waded through the snow toward the girl, panting for air. Everything was white and silent, the road completely deserted. The boy knelt down by the girl's side and saw how still and quiet she was. Seemingly afraid to hurt her, he put a hand out and gently touched her snow-covered shoulder. Then he started saying her name. When he first tried to wake her, the girl was still deep in a dream. She didn't want to wake up. Inside the dream she was safe, but she knew that if she woke up, she'd have to face the terrible thing that had just happened to her. She also knew somehow that outside the dream it was bitterly cold. The kind of cold that could suck the breath from your lungs and freeze the hairs in your nose. She would do anything to avoid feeling like that again. But the boy's intrusive voice wouldn't stop calling for her. Over and over she heard her name, and she fought against it. Suddenly, the hands touching her became rougher and she felt herself being pulled back into the harsh reality of her present surroundings. She curled up, keeping her eyes tightly shut. "You're bleeding," she heard the voice say. "Your nose." Although she couldn't place the voice, it sounded familiar. She supposed that now she was awake, she might as well give up and open her eyes. But when she tried, they wouldn't open all the way, like they were swollen or had sleep dirt in them.Eye boogers, she'd called the dirt when she was a little kid. She finally got her eyes partway open and was somewhat surprised to see where she was. She was lying right in the middle of the desolate, snow-covered road. The snow was almost two feet deep. "What happened?" she tried to ask as she sat up, but the words came out as a muffled burr. She reached a hand up and brushed snow and blood away from her nose and mouth. Her hand was shaking, and her left shoulder hurt like she'd been punched. "Courtney, are you okay?" The voice was panicked, trembling with concern. "Yeah," she mumbled. But she felt far from okay. Her head was aching like her brain wanted to burst out of the confines of her skull, and she felt dizzy, as though she'd drunk too much cough syrup. She brushed more snow off her face and out of her hair as she struggled to remember what had happened to her. When she looked down at her hand there was a lot of blood on it. "I feel sick." Vague memories flitted at the edges of her mind. Some of them seemed silly, and some seemed important. She had been inside a car, an SUV. She remembered it had smelled like French fries because they'd stopped for fast food at a drive-thru a few hours earlier. She tried to focus her mind on more crucial issues: Where was the car now? Where had they been coming back from? Where had they been going? Most of all, she wondered what had happened to her, and if she'd be okay. Courtney heard a noise as the boy sat down heavily in the snow next to her, looking dazed. In her confused state, she'd nearly forgotten about him. His tousled brown hair was matted with blood and dirt, and he had small cuts all over his face. They were tiny, like paper cuts. His eyes were very frightened, the pupils wide in the moonlight. For a second, she couldn't remember who he was, and it scared her. She knew she was supposed to know. Then his name came rushing back.[read more]